In the oil and gas industry, a Terminal Management System (TMS) is an automated solution that is used to facilitate, monitor, and control the distribution of products and manage critical processes in a bulk terminal to ensure optimum and safe operation of a bulk plant terminal. TMS may be divided into two areas including automation, which provides management of tank farm automation, product movement, driver access, and inventory control. The system also controls loading racks and associated equipment, pumps, valves, motors, weigh scales, meters, card readers, data entry terminals equipment. The second area is sales ticketing. In addition to bulk plant automation functionality, the system also allows for data exchange between TMS automation system and corporate data systems using a separate corporate computer communicating over standard TCP/IP in order to perform corporate level functions including billing interfaces, reports, and measurement units, etc.
When bulk plants communicate with a corporate network over standard TCP/IP connection for sales and billing transactions, there is always the possibility of hacking or malware spreading between the two networks even with use of sophisticated firewalls and other security systems. Current TCP/IP connection between the bulk plants TMS system and corporate billing module is therefore susceptible to potential hacking and/or spreading of various types of malware or viruses or cybersecurity attacks. Because the corporate billing system only requires text based parameters to complete the sales transaction and issue a bill of sale, a full TCP/IP communication session that could potentially hinder system security may no longer be required.